Sunday, March 30, 2014

It's aggravating to listen to Minister for Smug Assholishness Pierre "Skippy" Poilievre rail on about voting "irregularities" in the last federal election when that talking point is so easily slapped onto a cutting board and disemboweled.

"Poilievre and other Conservative MPs have argued
Canada's election system is ripe for voter fraud and that there were
165,000 irregularities, including 50,000 linked to vouching, in the 2011
federal election, citing a report by Neufeld."

Hey, I know ... let's go see where Harry Neufeld got that first number of "165,000" ... ah, here it is [emphasis tail-waggingly added]:

"More than 12 million Canadian citizens cast ballots on May 2, 2011 and
the audit indicates that the applications of specific legal safeguards,
in place to ensure each elector is actually eligible to vote, were
seriously deficient in more than 165,000 cases due to systemic errors
made by election officials. Averaged across 308 ridings, election officers made over 500 serious
administrative errors per electoral district on Election Day."

Now go back and read the highlighted part again ... I'll wait. And do you see what's happening here? While Neufeld does indeed claim 165,000 errors or irregularities, he places the blame quite clearly on the election officials or election officers, not the voters. And this is where Pierre Poilievre is shown to be the unprincipled, pathological liar that he is, since it's unconscionable to continue to quote Neufeld's number of 165,000 errors while deliberately ignoring the very next few words in the same sentence which change completely the meaning of that number. Harry Neufeld is not blaming the voters, he is blaming the officials, and for Poilievre to deliberately distort this is simply dishonesty of the highest order.

And what about the alleged 50,000 irregularities tied to vouching? I am unable to find the number "50,000" anywhere in the Neufeld report, but I don't need to, as Poilievre conveniently admits that "there were
165,000 irregularities, including 50,000 linked to vouching", which means that the argument I just made above already covers Poilievre's relentless shrieking about vouching.

Neufeld identified 165,000 irregularities (which Poilievre openly admits includes his precious vouching), and clearly claimed that it was fault of election officials; Pierre Poilievre carefully reads the first part of that sentence, then deliberately stops reading because he doesn't like how it ends.